Neo-Nazis rarely use the word neo-Nazi to describe themselves, often opting for labels such as National Socialist, Nationalist or related terms. A few scholars refer to neo-Nazism as "neo-National Socialism." Some groups and individuals who support the ideology openly eschew Nazi-like terms to avoid social stigma or legal consequences. Some European countries have laws prohibiting the expression of pro-Nazi, racist or anti-Semitic views.

Holocaust denial and minimization

Many neo-Nazis promote Holocaust denial or Holocaust minimization. They claim that the intentional mass murder (often in gas chambers) of more than 6,000,000 Jews is either a lie or grossly exaggerated. Leading historians' estimates of the number of Jews who died during the Holocaust range from 5.1 to 6.2 million. Some Holocaust deniers do not identify themselves as neo-Nazis. Some neo-Nazis who do not deny that the Holocaust happened have pointed out alleged immoral equivalencies (e.g. the bombing of Dresden and the Expulsion of Germans after World War II); or they have have justified executions by the Nazis as retaliations for sabotage, terrorism and subversion.

Austria

Immediately after the Allies liberated Austria in 1945, the anti-Nazi parties - Socialists (SPÖ), Conservatives (ÖVP) and Communists (KPÖ) - passed legislation to overcome the effects of Nazi rule. A law passed on May 8, 1945, banned the NSDAP and Nazi activities.
The denazification program designed to purge the state apparatus and society of Nazi followers was not successful, mainly because of the size of the problem and the bureaucratic shortcomings of the program. This failure was reflected primarily in the fact that ex-members and sympathizers of the NSDAP did not change their beliefs. Over 500,000 registered Nazis were allowed to vote in the 1949 general election. A considerable number of ex-Nazis were integrated into the SPÖ and the ÖVP, and several concessions were made to appease them, such as suppression of the history of the Nazizeit (literally 'Nazi Time'); a fall-off in the prosecutions of Nazi war criminals; and the reinstatement of Nazi civil servants, teachers, professors, lawyers and police officers.

In the 1949 Austrian elections, ex-Nazis in the Verband der Unabhängigen (VdU) put up candidates and won seats, and the Austrian right wing went through a process of growth. The withdrawal of Allied troops from Austria in 1955 encouraged the consolidation of right-wing groups, ranging from neo-Nazis to moderate Pan-Germans. The VdU split in 1955, but re-formed itself one year later as the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). The first leaders of the FPÖ were former Nazis, such as Anton Reinthaller, who had been a government minister in the Nazi era, and Friedrich Peter, who had been a Schutzstaffel (SS) officer. The Austrian public saw itself confronted with the organized right for the first time in 1959, during the Schiller Celebrations, when Pan-German youth, sport and cultural organizations took to the streets. The FPÖ's students' organization RFS and its graduate equivalent Freiheitliche Akademikerverbände (FAV) attained considerable influence within student and university bodies.

1960s and later

In the 1960s, right-wing extremists, along with German Kameraden, gained notoriety by involvement in terrorist acts in the Italianprovince of Bolzano-Bozen. Prominent among these was Norbert Burger, the ex-RFS leader and subsequent chairman of the neo-Nazi Nationaldemokratische Partei (NDP). The influence that the extreme right had gained in the universities became dramatically apparent five years later, during the Borodajkewycz Affair. Hundreds of students demonstrated in favor of the anti-semitic university professor Borodajkewycz, and were involved in street battles in the course of which Ernst Kirchweger, a former concentration camp inmate, was beaten to death.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Friedrich Peter, Chairman of the FPÖ, started establishing his party within the democratic party system leading up to the entry of the FPÖ into a coalition government with the Socialists in 1983. This development led to the formation of a group around Norbert Burger (condemned in absentia by an Italian court for terrorist offenses in Bolzano), which split from the FPÖ in 1966 and set up the NDP. In contrast to its German counterpart of the same name, the Austrian NDP found little resonance in an electorate moving to the left in the late 1960s. In 1972, Kurt Waldheim, a Wehrmacht officer and SA member during the Nazi regime, was elected United Nations Secretary General. Waldheim's election had caused anger among some people who had lost relatives in the Holocaust, as well as anti-UN groups who theorized the UN was supportive of totalitarian ideologies.

The volume "Rechtsextremismus in Österreich seit 1945" ("Right-wing Extremism in Austria since 1945"), issued by DÖW in 1979, listed nearly 50 active extreme right-wing organizations in Austria. Their influence waned gradually, partly due to liberalization programs in secondary schools and universities that emphasized Austrian identity and democratic traditions. Votes for the RFS in student elections fell from 30% in the 1960s to 2% in 1987. In the 1995 elections for the student representative body Österreichische Hochschülerschaft, the RFS got 4% of the vote. The FPÖ won 22% of the votes at the General Election in the same year. In the 1980s, in the province of Carinthia, border issues with Slovenia and disagreements over the rights of Carinthia's Slovenian minority were used to orchestrate support for the far right organization Kärntner Heimatdienst.

A police operation, which mobilized 150 agents, searched five military barracks (in Leopoldsburg near the Dutch border: Kleine-Brogel, Peer, Brussels (Royal military school) and Zedelgem as well as 18 private addresses in Flanders. They found weapons, munitions, explosives, and a homemade bomb large enough to make "a car explode." The leading suspect, B.T., was organizing the trafficking of weapons, and was developing international links, in particular with the Dutch far right movement De Nationale Alliantie

Croatia

Neo-Nazis in Croatia base their ideology on the writings of Ante Pavelić and Ustaše ideology. The resurgence of the Ustaše movement in post-war Croatia is partly due to significant financial support of the Croatian Democratic Union by Croat far-right emigrants. For many of their modern supporters, the Ustaše are considered victims of the Bleiburg massacre, and the late president Franjo Tuđman even proposed to rebury Ustaše members together with victims of the Jasenovac concentration camp, as a sign of national reconciliation. Croatian Serbs and majority of Croats felt insulted by that proposal.

In 1999, Zagreb's Square of the Victims of Fascism was renamed The Square of The Great Men of Croatia, provoking widespread criticism of Croatia's attitude toward the Holocaust. In 2000, city council renamed the square to Square of the Victims of Fascism again. Two streets in Croatia were renamed after the prominent Ustaše figure Mile Budak, but since 2002, there has been a reversal of this development, and streets with the name of persons connected with the Ustaše movement are few or non-existent.

Germany

In Germany immediately after World War II, Allied forces and the new German government attempted to prevent the creation of new Nazi movements through a process known as denazification. The West German government had passed strict laws prohibiting Nazis from publicly expressing their beliefs as well as barring them from the political process. Displaying the swastika was an offense punishable by up to one year imprisonment. There was little overt neo-Nazi activity in Europe until the 1960s. However, some former Nazis retained their political beliefs, and passed them down to new generations.

After German reunification in the 1990s, neo-Nazi groups gained more followers, mostly among disaffected teenagers in the former East Germany. Many were new groups that arose amidst the economic collapse and high unemployment in the former East Germany. They have also had an aversion to people from Slavic countries (especially Poland) and people of other national backgrounds who moved from the former West Germany into the former German Democratic Republic after Germany was reunited. Much of their ideology was similar to Strasserism.

Activities

German neo-Nazis have attacked accommodations for refugees and migrant workers in Hoyerswerda (September 17-September 22, 1991); Rostock-Lichtenhagen (August 23-August 27, 1992); and Schwedt, Eberswalde, Eisenhüttenstadt, Elsterwerda (October 1991), and painted graffiti on 9 Polish-owned cars in Löcknitz (13 January2008). Neo-Nazis were involved in the murders of three Turkish girls in a November 23, 1992 arson attack in Mölln, in which nine other people were injured. A May 29, 1993 arson attack by far right skinheads on the house of a Turkish family in Solingen resulted in the deaths of two women and three girls, as well as in severe injuries for seven other people. This, and similar incidents preceded demonstrations in many German cities involving hundreds of thousands of people protesting against far right violence. These protests precipitated massive neo-Nazi counter-demonstrations and violent clashes between neo-Nazis and anti-fascists. Statistics show that in 1991, there were 849 hate crimes, and in 1992 there were 1,485 (with a significant concentration in the eastern Bundesländer). After 1992, the numbers went down, although they have risen sharply in subsequent years. In 4 decades of the former East Germany, 17 people have been murdered by far right groups.

Legal issues

German law forbids the production of pro-Nazi materials, so such items are smuggled into the country mostly from the United States, Scandinavia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Italy. Neo-Nazi rock bands such as Landser have been outlawed in Germany, yet bootleg copies of their albums printed in the US and other countries are still sold in the country.

German neo-Nazi websites mostly depend on Internet servers in the US and Canada, and use other terms for Nazi ideas and symbols. They also invent new symbols reminiscent of the swastika and adopt other symbols used by the Nazis, such as the sun disc, sun wheel, hooked cross, wolf's cross, wolf's hook, black sun, and dark star. A trial was held before the Federal Constitutional Court of Germany over the prohibition of the National Democratic Party (NPD), which had been accused of being a partly neo-Nazism accepting party. In the course of the trial, it was discovered that some high-ranking party members worked as informants for the domestic intelligence service, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz. The trial was temporarily suspended, and then rejected by the court because of the unclear influence of informants within the NPD.

Greece

The most notable Greek neo-Nazi political organization is Chrysi Avyi. Twelve Greek neo-Nazis participated as volunteers in the Yugoslav wars in Bosnia, aiding the Serbian Army in capturing the town of Srebrenica.

Israel

Israel has seen a surge of neo-Nazi activity in the past decade, linked to the arrival of over 1.2 million immigrants from the former Soviet Union a substantial proportion of whom do not identify as Jews, even though they have some Jewish ancestry. In August 2007, Israeli police broke up a cell in Petah Tikva made up of eight young immigrants from the former Soviet Union, which had had been attacking religious Jews, foreign workers and gays; and which had been vandalizing synogogues with Nazi images.

The Soviet Union-born neo-Nazis are reported to operate in cities across Israel, and have been described as having little connection to Jewish heritage, and of being influenced by the rise of neo-Nazism and anti-Semitism in Europe. Widely publicized arrests have led to a call to reform the Law of Return to permit the revocation of Israeli citizenship for and the subsequent deportation of neo-Nazis.

Russian neo-Nazi organizations have generally defined themselves as standing outside of the political process, disdaining the electoral system and advocating the overthrow of the government by force. Their ideology has centered on defending Russian national identity against what they perceive as a takeover by minority groups such as Jews, Caucasian (whether Orthodox or Muslim) and Central Asian immigrants as well as muslim Russians. Dark skinned Russians are often subject to racial abuse, regardless of religious affliation. Cleansing the nation by killing or expelling Jews and also dark- skinned immigrants from other parts of the country as well as former countries of the USSR has been a generally accepted goal for Russian neo-Nazis. Their ideology became epitomized in the slogan "Russia for the Russians", a catchphrase also adopted by less extreme factions. Russian neo-Nazis have generally not outlined discernible economic programs. They have openly admired and imitated the German Nazis and Adolf Hitler, and Hitler's book Mein Kampf stood high on their reading list. The most prominent organization, Russian National Union, led by Aleksandr Barkashov, adopted a three-ray Swastika as its emblem (the German Nazi swastika can be thought of consisting of two rays; the Z shaped segments).

Social roots

The collapse of the Soviet economic system in the early 1990s caused great economic and social problems, including widespread unemployment and poverty. Several far rightparamilitary organizations were able to tap into popular discontent, particularly among the marginalized, lesser educated, and habitually unemployed youth. Of the three major age groups youths, adults, and the elderly youths may have been hit the hardest. The elderly suffered due to inadequate (or unpaid) pensions, but they found effective political representation in the Communists, and generally had their concerns addressed through better budget allocations. Adults, although often suffering financially and psychologically due to job losses, were generally able to find new sources of income. Moreover, Soviet-era indoctrination into the ideals of egalitarianism predisposed most adults against the message of right-wing extremists. Younger Russians were much less likely to have such inclinations.

Activities

Russian neo-Nazis have made it an explicit goal to take over the country by force, and have put serious effort into preparing for this. Paramilitary organizations operating under the guise of sports clubs have trained their members in squad tactics and weapons handling. They have stockpiled and used weapons, often illegally. Reputedly, many were interested in martial arts and unarmed combat, and have organized realistic hand to hand combat classes. Russian neo-Nazis' most notable action so far was their participation in the armed defense of the Supreme Soviet building against government forces during the standoff between Boris Yeltsin and the Communist-dominated parliament in 1993.

On August 15, 2007, Russian authorities arrested a student for allegedly posting a video on the Internet which appears to show two Muslim, migrant workers being beheaded in front of a red and black Swastika flag. Alexander Verkhovsky, the head of a Moscow-based center that monitors hate crime in Russia, said, "It looks like this is the real thing. The killing is genuine...There are similar videos from the Chechen war. But this is the first time the killing appears to have been done intentionally." A Russian neo-Nazi group called the National Socialists of Russia claimed responsibility for the murders.

Serbia

There are several neo-Nazi groups in Serbia. Neo-Nazism in Serbia appeared in the 1990s during the Yugoslav wars. Before the breakup of Yugoslavia, neo-Nazism was strictly forbidden and very unpopular. Although neo-Nazism in Germany mostly focuses on racial and political intolerance, neo-Nazism in Serbia is mostly based on national and religious factors. Nacionalni stroj (National Alignment), a neo-Nazi organization from the Vojvodina region, orchestrated several incidents in 2005. Charges were laid against 18 of the leading members in late 2005, and each of them faced up to eight years in prison. The group was still active in 2007, as was demonstrated by a display of religious hatred.

Blood and Honour has a branch in Serbia, where it is called Krv i čast. Its website claims that the group intends "to propagate revolutionary idea of National Socialism without compromise. Also, the intention of Serbian Blood and Honour Division is to motivate all NS followers to radical activities and not only to passive observing or listening to the music. Since 2001, this organization, with chapters in several Serbian cities, organized several memorial concerts on the anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth.

United States

There are a number of small neo-Nazi groups in the United States today. The earliest example of this ideological tendency can be traced back to the 1920s and the formation of a domestic U.S. Nazi Party. This organization merged with Free Society of Teutonia to form the German-American Bund. The German-American Bund and similar groups achieved limited popularity in the 1930s (at one point staging a rally with over 20,000 people), but rapidly faded with the onset of World War II. The groups either disbanded or were dismantled by force of law (such as the 1942 sedition trial) during the war period. After the war, new organizations formed, with varying degrees of support for Nazi principles.

Organizations dedicated to monitoring American neo-Nazi activities include the Anti-Defamation League and Southern Poverty Law Center. While a small minority of American neo-Nazis draw public attention, most operate underground, so they can recruit, organize and raise funds without interference or harassment. The American correctional system houses many white supremacist and neo-Nazi prison gangs, and often white prisoners join those gangs for protection.

Members of The Order were convicted of crimes such as racketeering, conspiracy, violating civil rights and sedition. Matthew F. Hale of the World Church of the Creator was imprisoned for soliciting the murder of a federal judge. Aryan Nations lost a $6.2 million dollar lawsuit after Aryan Nations members opened fire on a passing vehicle. Aryan Nations has since lost its headquarters and paramilitary training grounds, and has split into three separate organizations.

Shadows Over Europe: The Development and Impact of the Extreme Right in Western Europe edited by Martin Schain, Aristide Zolberg, and Patrick Hossay (Palgrave Macmillan; 1st edition, 2002, ISBN 0-312-29593-6)

The Fame of a Dead Man's Deeds: An Up-Close Portrait of White Nationalist William Pierce by Robert S. Griffin (Authorhouse, 2001, ISBN 0-7596-0933-0)